Western air strikes against Libya drew widespread criticism in the Arab press today despite the support given by the 22-member Arab League last weekend for the imposition of a non-fly zone.
Arabic newspapers in neighbouring Tunisia and Algeria raised the same spectre of a Western drive for oil that dogged the US-led invasion of Iraq eight years ago.
Some French-language newspapers gave the military action by Britain, France and the United States guarded support but it was left to the Gulf press to champion a tough response to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's bloody crackdown on a one-month-old rebellion.
Tunisia's independent Achourouk newspaper worried that the Western intervention on the side of the rebels would play into Gaddafi's hands.
"Foreign intervention will tarnish the Libyan people's battle against a corrupt dictatorship," the paper said.
The Western air strikes posed a "threat for the region which is in danger of becoming an area of tension and an advanced base for imperialist forces that have no interest in seeing it experience a revolutionary jump forward by democratic and nationalist forces," it added
Tunisia was where the wave of protests sweeping the Arab world began last December leading to the ouster of veteran president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January. Last month Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak was forced to step down after 30 years in power in the face of similar mass demonstrations.
The Assabah newspaper said the largest Western military intervention in the Arab world since 2003 "raises many fears and brings back memories of what happened in Iraq."
"There is no doubt that material interests are the main motivation for this military intervention and that it is being fuelled by oil," it said.
The French-language Le Temps newspaper said it backed the Western action "after many hesitations" but on condition that it be limited to the terms of UN Security Council Resolution 1973 which authorised a no-fly zone and other action to protect Libyan civilians.
"The whole region needs a positive outcome in Libya that will allow us to avoid the risks of political instability and insecurity, and a humanitarian crisis, which burdens Tunisia is continuing to bear."
Tens of thousands of migrant workers and other expatriates have poured across the Libyan border into Tunisia since the uprising began last month.
In Algeria, the top-selling El Khabar newspaper carried an editorial headlined: "When oil gets mixed up with Libyan blood."
It said "international disagreements (about the intervention) are the result of a race to take over Libya's oil," and that France, the former colonial power in both Algeria and Tunisia, was "staking out the lion's share" after leading the drive for military action and carrying out the first strikes.
"The real battle is about oil, it has nothing to do with the Libyan people," it said.
The French-language El Watan newspaper mocked the Western drive to intervene in Libya while taking no action over bloody protests in Bahrain, base of the US Fifth Fleet, or Yemen, a key US ally in its "war on terror."
But the paper's editorial came down on the side of intervention, saying that ultimately it was not an act of foreign imperialism.
Only in the Gulf, where Qatar was participating in the military action, was there any real appetite for the Western intervention.
"Stop Gaddafi forces today, not tomorrow," an editorial in the United Arab Emirates daily Gulf News said hours before the strikes started.
"Gaddafi's actions have shocked the world, but the people of Benghazi need action today, not tomorrow," it said, referring to Libya's rebel-held bastion.
"Delay is not acceptable."